Who is Michael Gibbs ?

Michael Gibbs(1949-2009) is known as an artist, writer, poet and publicist. His enormous body of work, in collaboration with many, proves a real treasure trove for art historians. Michael Gibbs was a gentle and tolerant believer in the social, cultural, political and experimental worth of art.

In his performances Gibbs ‘took the text off the page and onto the stage’. He experimented with language, made concrete-, visual- and sound-poetry, installations with video and photography.  He developed stamp art, mail art, artist’s books. He contributed to international art magazines and published his own and was a pioneer on the early internet with an online artmagazine. He was a great collaborator, teacher, lecturer, art-critic and curator.

He published the magazine Kontexts  in which he published works by colleagues from Europe, Latin America and the United States. In his magazine Artzien he published reviews of art exhibitions mainly in Amsterdam and written by visual artists. He was invited to festivals, many shows, bookstores and so his network spread. Ulises Carrión, John Cage, William Burroughs, Stéphane Mallarmé, Fluxus-artists and many others were of great inspiration and due to collaborations they became part of Michael Gibbs’ work.

Michael Gibbs studied literature and arts in the UK, his country of origin, and later lived and worked in Amsterdam.